


lists and stupid general things

by falsemurmur



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 15:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsemurmur/pseuds/falsemurmur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She sees him on a street, no office buildings in sight. She doesn’t pretend to not see him, she goes up to him, and he’s Darcy awkward, not <i>awkward awkward</i> as she once perceived him. This nice settled feeling sits warmly in her stomach. Her hand reaches out to his arm as she thanks him “for Lydia”, but she flexes her fist instead. The warmth burns at her throat suddenly, and she awkwardly, Lizzie inappropriate but not <i>inappropriate inappropriate</i>, leaves.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	lists and stupid general things

**Author's Note:**

> it's been two years since my last fic (admission: two years since i've written anything from start to finish. it's a mess, i don't like it's general-ness, but my insanity is such. this LBD thing has sucked my brain, basically.

;;

_Things that should be easy_ is a list that begins with berating your stupid little sister for being so dumb ( _thank God you’re pretty_ , and many other things you clearly don’t mean, and your sister should know you don’t really mean because it’s the 21st century and _come on_ , sisters say these things to each other) and somewhere along the way includes watching the Friends series finale as opposed to the Lost series finale (comedy! _No way this ends in tears!_ ), and ends with being kind to everyone for everyone is fighting some struggle or another (okay, this one’s not easy to do, but _impossible to forget_ , right?). This list ends up reading like a paradigm for failures and _HOW TO CAUSE A MASSIVE DISASTER 101_.

 

Lizzie is 24, and she’s heard of these little adults who, oddly enough, being her age have moved out of their parent’s home and into the brave world with grade A jobs and basic living situations despite the shitty economy. But Charlotte is the closest to a true thing she’s actually witnessed to adhere to such a strange notion, not that it means she doesn’t hear the end of it from this living vicariously through her aunt, that brain dead cousin (okay, too much, _mental note 897, Lizzie Bennet_ ), and high school person Facebook friend posting addict. Oh, well Bing and Darcy are sort of successes, but money and connections help a lot (yes, drive, intellect, and hard work help more, but _circumstances_! Let’s not pretend they only count a little.) So, Lizzie is 24 and she’s been fine all along, but lately? It’s like she scratched the surface of home, only to be interrupted by yes, legitimate life-altering things that resulted in her going back to that old familiar base that’s kept her safe and sheltered (in a mostly good way), but she wasn't done digging.

Home used to mean this room with that bed and that window looking out at the street. Neighborhood was more her sisters across the hall and dinner downstairs with mom, dad, Lydia, Jane at the table, irritated to the max and yet, “hell, where else would we eat?” (and who else? Anyone else was a visitor from another land, even if they lived next door, or two states away where her grandparents were visiting from). Now it’s this concept. She can’t get at it yet. But it was…it was researching for that paper, helping at the office when they were shorthanded, doling out support and advice to Charlotte, knowing she was doing an awesome job at whatever needed to be done, not accounting for certain activities to parents, arguing with Darcy, playing fake instruments with Fitz, and stuff. It wasn’t a place, not Pemberley Digital itself, but more the working on her life and being around people who challenged her but never asked her to be someone other than herself (at least not seriously).

The videos were a start, she realizes, the reaching out of a yearning. But they took off, and it was great. But less and less, they were necessary.

\

 

She’s not dying, clawing at the floor, brooding over indecipherable feelings. It’s mostly regret, which she simply has no taste for. It’s bitter and ice cold in her stomach, and she cannot have it. She knows then, that she’ll have to partake in making amends or apologies, but that’s just gross (let’s save the good words for the good school papers, yes? Great!).

 

But then again, she can’t suck it up for the rest of her life and think “well, who knows what would have been? I’m fine, he’s fine without me, I found another awesome job, and I’m the most amazing, delightful, wonderful human being on the planet, second in life force only to one Jane Benet.” Because she would be fine and amazing, she knows. But once in a while, just like at this one moment, she’ll know that she chose to save face, to imagine a moment rather than live one, and to keep things locked away for only herself to know. Lizzie would be amongst the many who didn’t know which selfish pursuit to follow, who didn't actively make a choice.

 

 

 

Suddenly it’s offices that she loves most. When she interviews, the chairs cause a lump in her throat. Desks sometimes ( _not always_!) make her eyes water. Windows with a view make her eyes go wide. The best (worst) part is when the door opens to the office. Doesn’t matter what side she’s on. She’s waiting for something, regardless if there’s a knock or not, when that door opens, either welcoming her in to the interview, showing her out, or worse when someone needs to speak to her interviewer and they come in when she’s completely focused, her heart becomes this wild mess that she has to refocus. She manages to, of course, she just hates that a door can surprise her so. It’s just a door, it’s just people.

 

/

Time has bounced along fine, don’t worry. It hasn’t been months, let alone years. It’s only been seven and a half weeks of interviews and even more sporadic videos.

 

(That last independent study is still going, don’t worry. No giving up here. And the videos won’t end too soon, but they will at one point. People have to move, they can’t do just one thing here and just one thing there. A small job to keep busy won’t hurt this girl.)

 

She sees him on a street, no office buildings in sight. She doesn’t pretend to not see him, she goes up to him, and he’s Darcy awkward, not _awkward awkward_ as she once perceived him. This nice settled feeling sits warmly in her stomach. Her hand reaches out to his arm as she thanks him “for Lydia”, but she flexes her fist instead. The warmth burns at her throat suddenly, and she awkwardly, Lizzie inappropriate but not _inappropriate inappropriate_ , leaves.

 

_(Links lead you to things, more often than not to ridiculous articles and hilarious videos, but sometimes they lead to surprising reveals that make you go “oh”. Internet links led to finding this right, that pride. Internet links lead to a lot of things, but people links, they bring you up, grow up with you, encourage you to trail whatever paths you like, yell sometimes. People links are Jane, always Jane, Lydia once in a while what with the young and free, mom when I remember that her ridiculousness is just a way of helping her daughters, Charlotte with her sanity and no bullshitting, dad and his things work out if you work them out, and it’s basically a long list, so you get it. Now that list includes Darcy, is what I’m getting at. I don’t know how or to what purpose. My name is Lizzie Bennet, and I'm learning.)_

 

Lydia seemed to have grown up in a minute, gone from the ridiculous but innocent, harmless toddler. She was always supposed to be harmless, however embarrassing. It's like she, Lizzie Bennet, forgot that her sister was a person, person. Living her own hells and doubts along with the self-amazement she poured at herself. They were alike in that way - wondering if they said too much despite being perfectly aware that their ways were so brilliant, they could be mistaken for insanity. Lydia simply chose to keep the doubts mum whereas Lizzie couldn't help but voice and want to disprove them aloud. One difference, a thousand words later, and one grand misunderstanding later, Lizzie saw her sister in her. Darcy, in all his mispositioned intentions, helped the best part of her and broke another best part - her little sister and her big sister.

 

 

Someone older, despite being wiser, tells her how to live her life. If she lets it get to her, she’ll come to resemble this older person someday. Not that Lizzie’s one to tell someone how to get their life on. Just that in the context of things, if Lizzie were to prattle along the border of wanting something but being too damn stubborn to do something about it, she’ll end up yelling at it and the things around it instead. Like yelling at her camera. No, she’s been doing that, lately more than ever. Just yelling and complaining. Enough.

(Let's strike the wiser part, because old she may be, but Catherine de Bourgh is no wise woman. Bossy, nosy, "your family has no business affiliating with mine in such a defiling manner" insane, yes. And respecting your elders is fine and all, but there's no use in respecting the ridiculous.)

 

This one’s about a guy. Man sounds too robotic, and boy is not what a Darcy is. Yes, this one, this Lizzie heart story is about Darcy. The job matters, the eventual career matters, family is where it's at, everything is priority number one, not one above the other. Right now, it’s Darcy, though.

In an office, in front of a red blinking light, Lizzie doesn’t let it fall out, and she doesn’t spit it out. She’s timid, but frank. She doesn’t shake, but her voice is just the slightest terse. Because she’s in love, but she’s not falling over her feet or down a spiral of out of control, puppy something or another.

It has to be in an office. Under the impression that she wants to practice interviewing skills (she didn’t tell him such, no. She didn’t, technically, imply it. Alright, over the phone she may have gotten nervous and inexplicably ordered him to meet her at Pemberley Digital because that’s where she would be and she needed to brush up on some skill sets. _You see, talking is a skill set!_ Hence, stuff she needed to brush up on. Honesty is a tricky business, really).

He sits, and then she sits, but that doesn’t work, so she gets up, and Darcy, being Darcy, stands as soon as she does. She clears her throat, and his eyes are trained on her, and she smiles. She doesn’t shake, and she’s glad to have foregone speech practice or imaginary scenario practice in her head. She’s also surprised to have her head so clear, so free from ideas of what may happen or what he may do. She has no idea how he may react, or if he still feels the things he did so many months ago, and she has no right to infer the dealings of his heart or the reasons behind it. She can only say what she knows of herself.

“I’m sorry,” she begins with, “not for everything, because hey, you were a jerk,” she goes on, and his nose flicks and her heart clenches, but she doesn’t stop, “but I’ve grown to love you, anyway,” she ends with.

 

His face is frozen then, and she realizes she hasn’t actually ended. But he speaks up first.

“Your apologies aren’t necessary. I can see how my past actions may have caused you to misunderstand my actions-“

“Darcy, shut up—please?” she amends herself, “just a minute, less than?”

He nods.

“I love you, love you. Not hey, I love you, man, it's all good. I love you, William Darcy.” (She snorts at one point. He adores it. Not likes, nor loves, _adores_.) She reaches her hand out to his shoulder, and his face relaxes, and no really, she loves this office, and the whole damn building, because his whole body relaxes under the touch of her hand, and when she makes her way down to his wrist, he’s smiling.

“My feelings haven’t changed. Only grown further,” he says, a small blush crawling along his cheeks, happiness in her toes, and when he turns his wrist so her hand catches in his, in their fingers.

Expectations like to play against hopes, worse than reality because people, after a million and one let downs, expect the worse. Lizzie didn’t expect a thing from Darcy from the beginning (aside from the expectation of being a self-entitled moron, whatever), not now (except for him to kiss her, but forget that, she’s going for it).

She lets his hand go, grips his tie, and pulls him forward. She kisses him hard, no time for waiting when the viewers at home have to get another trope checked off their lists.

 

 

(Someday, this day being yet another that he doesn't tire of the taste of her neck against her cutting tongue of "you don't know them, stop frigging judging them just because they didn't grow up under the same circumstances you did, Mr. Richie Rich", he apologizes for being wrong, all wrong about everything except for knowing that she was the only woman in any one room that mattered against the drop of ideas, pretentiousness, and general hiding behind smiles and snarks.

 

"I was scared that I'd met every sort of person before," she'll say, her voice a whimper from the nose digging into the bottom of her left ear, that I'd known men and women like you before."

 

"I was scared you'd known me before, at all," he murmurs against her beating pulse.

 

They have no need to forgive each other for this first impression, ever, just argue, fall into odd laughing patterns, and Lizzie knows, he's more sorry than he knows how to say, or she knows how to string together, but they're too young now and too old 67 years later to drudge over those things, because they fought their natural instincts through circumstance and decided to give themselves a chance.)

 

 

.


End file.
